Jackboot

by Will Van Allen

  Paranoia had found a place to roost.

  “It’s a four-tier system. I basically own a DSLAM in a B-Box about seven thousand meters south. Wanted fiber but try explaining that to the Homeland Security.” He slurped at his Dew. “You can sit.”

  “Is that a VSP? What on earth do you need that for?”

  Mitch looked at him sideways.

  “You don’t have to tell me.”

  “No,” he shrugged. “You’re probably the only one I can tell.” He smiled appraisingly at the Hitachi Storage Area Network. “Lessee, there’s four TBs of BOA’s transactions for twenty-nine million accounts. The donor list of the Republican National Party on a gig. DoE’s national grid failover scenarios—pray that never happens. Some FBI files on Fred Hampton that will never see the light of day, Skull and Bones initiation logs since eighteen-seventy. Brazil, Peru, Colombia’s prisons rosters. PetroChina’s unpublished internals for the past three years, Sega’s scrapped answer to the Xbox, Blizzard’s alpha of StarCraft 2, and some crazy Area 51 video I can’t verify. My Morrowind mods. Other stuff. I call it my Trapper Keeper.

  “Why?”

  “’Cause it’s shiny.”

  “No, why—”

  “Someone wanted it. Or I was curious. It’s completely encrypted.”

  “Your power bill’s got to be ridiculous.”

  “Another D&D buddy works for Inland Power. He hooked me up.”

  Screens flashed on a monitor: Dartmouth & Allegheny Financial Services followed by Willkommen bei Gootenkrieg Bankengruppe. Mitch worked the mouse, tapped the keys.

  “What distro you running?”

  His look said that was a stupid question. “Debian. An Open Solaris or two. How’s your kid?” Tap-tap-tap.

  “Good. I think.”

  “And the ex-wife?”

  “About the same as the kid.”

  Mitch nodded. And then they sat together silently in the dark, one slurping Dew, the other iced tea.

  McConnell blinked. “I feel like an asshole.”

  Bullock pushed his glasses up his nose, met McConnell’s eyes and didn’t flinch away. He was comfortable down here among all the machines. Lord of his dark domain.

  “Because you haven’t talked to me in eight years and now you want something?” Taptaptaptap.

  The glow of the monitors flickered with scrolling data.

  “Is this how it’s going to be?” McConnell asked.

  “It’s however you want it, John.”

  He nodded. “I need information.”

  “Did you try the county library?”

  “Fuck it,” he said and stood to leave.

  “Alright.” The hacker’s eyes glittered behind his glasses. “What type of information?”

  He should walk away. He could come back and try to rekindle their friendship another time. This shadow of a man, whatever he was into, it wasn’t anything like what McConnell had resolved to do.

  And yet there was no one else he knew who could do it.

  “You going to tell me or not? I don’t have all day.”

  He tossed back the iced tea, sat down and told Anj’s story. After that he told Nielsen’s, handing over the printout of the white UN vehicles in Iraq. Mitch’s recalcitrance disappeared and he sunk deeper into his chair, his glasses reflecting the glow of the monitors. When McConnell had finished, the hacker absorbed it all enveloped in the air conditioning roar.

  “Did—did Anj know?”

  “Know?”

  “About me? What happened?”

  McConnell let out a deep sigh. “Yeah. She did. It was a long time ago. She’d heard a rumor. Aaron Desmitt had been drinking and talking at a bar—”

  Mitch’s eyes grew as big as moons.

  “I took care of it,” he reassured him. “We had a little chat. Don’t worry. He’ll never say anything again.”

  “You sure? I mean—”

  “I’m sure. I’ve never heard it spoken of before or since. But I had to tell Anj. She always knew our story was bullshit. You know she wanted to talk to you back then, and later, after what happened. To her. She just didn’t know how. Mitch? You alright?”

  “Just gimme a second.” His head had drooped, he was panting, his fingers spread upon the arms of his chair. “God…she was so sweet…so sweet…Goddamn it!” he wiped at his eyes. “So what information do you—?” It dawned on him. His jaw slowly dropped. “What are you going to do?”

  McConnell eyed the hacker levelly. “Justice.”

  “Revenge, you mean.”

  He waved a hand. “Words were always your thing, not mine.”

  “Revenge won’t bring her back. And only God can mete out true justice.”

  “You don’t even believe in God.”

  “I can’t help you kill someone, John.” But a war was raging behind those glasses.

  “People kill each other all the time. Hell, the government does it every damn day.”

  “That’s different.”

  “Is it? The government says ‘they’re evil, hate us for our freedom, go shoot em’ and soldiers go and do the shooting, they don’t really know why, or if the ‘they’ they’re shooting are really evil. But these people, well, they’re evil, and we both know evil, don’t we, Mitch?”

  “Murder is immoral. All murder.”

  “Yeah,” McConnell nodded. “You got me there.”

  Mitch frowned. “You do believe in God.”

  “I don’t know what I believe, anymore. But I know if that fucker’s dead he can’t hurt anybody else.” The hacker looked like he wanted to ask him to leave. “But I’m not here for Odom, well, not exactly. I’m here because of my brother.”

  Mitch waved Nielsen’s printout. “If I help you with any of this it makes me an accessory.”

  “Yep.”

  Mitch gave him a look.

  “Look, I just need to know if Nielsen’s story holds water. If you can verify that, anything about the UN license plates, from there…” He shrugged. “I know those are numbers on the plates, what the rest—”

  “The black plate means they’re temporary. It’s standard with MNF-I and UN vehicles. The other is the province name in Arabic. These are Basrah plates, I think.”

  He was impressed. “You know Arabic?”

  Mitch drummed fingernails against the table next to the keyboard. “How’s your mom doing?”

  “Been better. Yours?”

  “Same.” The hacker tossed the paper on the table, sat back and folded his hands across his potbelly, rocked in his chair.

  “Revenge, justice, murder and moms. And here I thought you came out to make amends.”

  “Afraid not.”

  They watched an attractive, short-haired blonde in a blue dress silently mouth her story on the TV.

  “I’ll help you. But only because Angela didn’t deserve what happened to her.”

  Had the room grown colder?

  “I’ll need one more thing,” McConnell said.

  “Of course you will.”

  “A rifle. Untraceable.”

  Mitch laughed. “And how am I supposed to get you a rifle?”

  He glanced at the hardware along the wall.

  Mitch sighed. “Alright. It won’t come cheap. Want some fake IDs too? So when the shit hits the fan you can skip out and farm rutabagas in Borneo?”

  “Good idea.” He slid a paper across the table. Mitch flipped on a lamp and read it. “Never heard of this gun. Wait, five hundred rounds?”

  “Been a while, I’ll need practice.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Anything else you think I missed?”

  “No, but this killing people business is new to me,” Mitch said dryly. He ran a hand through his graying hair, rubbed at downy stubble that never matured into anything remotely resembling a beard. “So, besides plotting murder what else is new?”

  “Not much. Got the dog, two bastard cats.”

  “How’s that working for you?”

  “Dog’s great. The
cats, well, they just eat, sleep, shit. You?”

  “I do the same, mostly.”

  “Still raiding multinationals?”

  “We all have our peccadillos.”

  They sat and watched the blonde reporter silently wrap up her report.

  “Well. This has been great. Should be great fodder for future father-daughter time. You can have the murder and sex talks all in the same conversation.”

  “Is it just me that brings out the sarcasm in you?”

  “It’s not just you. I have to cook for my chef course. You can stay for supper if you like.”

  Supper was scrumptious. Chicken, crawfish, tasso, morels and onions tossed with farfalle and a spicy light cream sauce; mixed greens with shrimp, toasted almonds and mandarins in a zesty mint-raspberry vinaigrette; for the finale, a slice of cheesecake drowned in strawberries and ganache.

  After, they sipped Turkish coffee and smoked Cubans on the porch. The sun took its sweet time sinking, leaving the sky a ponderous periwinkle.

  “Nice.” McConnell waved his Cohiba.

  Mitch nodded beneath Saturnian rings of smoke. He slapped at his arm, walked to the other end of the porch where he plugged in a bug zapper dangling from the rafters. Livid, luminescent death came alive to await hapless passersby. He returned to lean against the railing, staring into the twilight.

  ZAP!

  Mitch jumped as the first victim went down. With a backwards glance at the zapper he returned to his chair. “Question. What if you get caught? They could trace you back to me. It wouldn’t be hard.”

  “I’m not gonna give you up, if that’s what you’re worried about. All they’d find is a couple old friends bullshitting on the porch, smoking Cubans.”

  “Are we old friends?”

  “I’m not perfect, Mitch. In fact, I fuck up personal relationships on a regular basis. So if you’re feeling special about it, don’t.”

  Harsher than he intended but he’d been taking crap most of the day.

  “I do a lot of other things besides smoke illegal cigars, you know,” Mitch said. “And what about this Nielsen? How can we trust he won’t talk to someone? And say I do dig up something on the UN. Then what? Are you going to travel to Iraq and shoot some UN guys?”

  ZAP! ZAP! Two more bugs bit the dust.

  “I dunno. Don’t have it all figured out yet.” He tapped the ash off his cigar.

  “What about going to the feds?”

  “Are you seriously advocating reaching out to the feds?”

  “Alright, damn it. What about a congressman? Or the press?”

  “And say what? Tell them a story told by an ineffective, cowardly marine that’s already whitewashed?”

  “You’re being cynical,” Mitch countered. “If I find something concrete, something irrefutable, if it was the UN who was involved, people would listen—”

  “Maybe. If you find something we’ll talk about it but as far as Anj, what happens there is our secret. That doesn’t ever leave this farm.”

  “No. Anj, that’s different.” Mitch sipped at his coffee. “How is her family?”

  “Mom’s the same. Sister’s in law school.”

  “I’ve heard she’s quite the catch.”

  “Anj’s mom?”

  “Shut up. Is she?”

  McConnell puffed on his cigar. “Go into town and find out for yourself.”

  ZAP! ZAP! ZAP!

  Casualties were mounting.

  They savored their smokes. And the night. No moon, the stars popped bright in an inky blue as a band of crickets played a merry concert near the barn. A solitary coyote’s howl went unanswered save a low growl from Geronimo, Ollie ignoring the lament altogether. Mitch brought out an expensive brandy but McConnell declined and settled for a Stella instead.

  “How much money you got?” the hacker asked offhandedly. McConnell gave him a look. “Just answer the question.”

  “Around fifty-K if you must know,” he begrudged him.

  “Not enough. Gear and travel expenses alone will eat up most of that. And if you have to go on the run?”

  “I’ll manage.”

  “And did you think about your daughter in any of this?”

  He might be worst father of the year material but he had. “Just more incentive to succeed swimmingly.”

  “I might be able to help you with money.”

  “I don’t want a loan.”

  ZAP!

  “Serendipity,” Mitch muttered.

  “What?”

  “I know better than to offer you a loan. But getaways ain’t cheap. I’m a year or two out from leaving the farm myself. Going to buy my island.”

  “Your island? Where?”

  Mitch smiled conspiratorially. “You were doing mostly Cisco stuff at IPFusion, right? Got your CCIE down in San Jose.”

  “You giving me my CV or asking a question?”

  “I don’t get why you stayed in Spokane.”

  “Born and bred I suppose.”

  “I wouldn’t brag about that too loudly. You could’ve made three or four times more money in Seattle.”

  “I hate the rain. And traffic. Traffic sucks. And—”

  “And your daughter’s here.”

  “That’s the second time you’ve mentioned her in less than a minute.”

  “Just trying to point to all the cards on the table. Bailing out that shitty little consulting firm all these years had to suck.”

  Mitch was surprisingly manipulative for a recluse. But they were getting along, sort of, so he played along. “It paid the bills.”

  “Not very well. That’s why I’m telling you—”

  “In a very roundabout way.”

  “—I have this project I’m working on. Interested?”

  “What kind of project?”

  “You won’t have to do much.”

  “I’m assuming this is illegal. Might not be my thing.”

  “Yeah, right, killing people aside, you’re a pretty stand-up guy when it comes to the law.”

  “Alright, let’s say it’s my thing.”

  “Shiny.”

  Mitch went inside for a spell, returned with a flash drive, slapped it into McConnell’s hand.

  “My latest version of my chat client, Grok. The large encryption requires some bandwidth but it’s virtually impregnable. Take over two hundred million years to crack it.” Mitch, the proud parent.

  “Does it come in cornflower blue?”

  “You’ll have to wipe that shit-eating Windows and install a real operating system, of course.”

  “Okay.”

  “And don’t try to read the code. If decompiled it releases a nasty data-eating virus that gobbles a gig a sec.”

  “Noted.”

  “So no more phone calls. No cell, no landline. No texts. Just Grok. Period.”

  “Got it.”

  “And you do not browse the web regarding Angela or your brother anymore. That’s all me now.”

  “Anything else?”

  They made for his truck.

  “How was the funeral?” Mitch asked, suddenly somber.

  McConnell opened the passenger door for Geronimo. “Which one?” But he knew which one.

  “I should’ve gone. I tried, you know.”

  “Funerals are for the living. She would’ve understood.”

  The hermitic hacker’s grip firmer this time, McConnell nodded at him, clambered in, started up the engine.

  “Wait!”

  He stopped at the bottom of the drive as Mitch ran up, slapping at his arms. The mosquitoes wanted revenge over their electrocuted comrades. “What about me?”

  “What about you?”

  “Would you, uh, you know…If I asked you to?”

  He breathed deep the indigo night.

  Mitch misread it. “Not saying I want that. Over the years I’ve thought to hack their accounts, screw their credit, but…” He shook his head. “It was a long time ago.”

  “I dunno. Was it?”

&nb
sp; A monument of naked, tortured teenage angst forever frozen in time fidgeted in the gravel.

  McConnell waved down the road. “If it would help. Hell, I’d take care of those bastards tonight. But they’re not the one torturing you, Mitch. They’re not the one alone and bitter and angry.”

  Pot meet the kettle but it didn’t make it any less true.

  He bid goodnight and drove away.

  CHAPTER 19

  JULY

  Spokane, Washington

  After a long run where he had admired Mrs. Davis’s eye-magnet lime shorts conveniently ahead on the trail, ostensibly unplanned, he stared at his laptop screen, specifically, Mitch’s chat client. It had been days and nothing. Grok was silent. He wondered if the hacker had changed his mind. He couldn’t fault him if he did.

  At least his conversation with Rich had paid off; his final paycheck, including vacation pay had been deposited that morning. Which made the appearance of an overripe-plum Lincoln Navigator blocking him in as he reversed down the driveway unsurprising. It was like she could smell money.

  “Incoming,” he muttered to the dog, exiting the truck.

  “Mornin’, Carrie,” he said sweetly as she marched over in her stiletto heels. She was dressed for success—fuschia miniskirt and jacket, white nylons, platinum hair pulled back. Her chipped-topaz eyes flared like flecks of ice beneath an Antarctic sun.

  “Still no check for June!” She waved a hand that demanded said check magically appear. She looked him up and down, cocked a hip and pushed out her cheek with her tongue. “So who’s the girl?”

  Something was new…Oh. “Are my eyes—did you get another—”

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  “That Jer’s one hell of a breast man.”

  She pressed out her new chest. Newer. “Where. Is. My. Check?”

  “It’s in the mail,” he lied making a mental note to write her child support check and put it in the mail.

  She gave him a long look. “Well? Are you going to ask after your only daughter?”

  “How is my only daughter?”

  “Stubborn as a mule and a brat besides. Why don’t you come take her for a weekend and see for yourself? You know, follow the parenting plan?”